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Wednesday, April 09, 2014

While aircraft carriers remain attractive to
established and emerging powers, do they actually represent good value
for money? Not according to the CSS’ Prem Mahadevan. As he sees it, the
perceived benefits of blue-water flattops are overrated.

By
Prem Mahadevan
for ISN

Aircraft
carriers have been an essential feature of sea power for just over a
century. But how has the strategic rationale for flat-tops evolved over
that time?

Aircraft carriers were originally intended to act as support vessels
for battleships, the heavily-armored men-of-war whose massive firepower
could blast away any smaller ships. At the time carriers were first
developed, in the early 20th century, the battleship was regarded as the
capital ship of the day. Capital ships are a category of vessel that
can decisively defeat any other type of vessel, while still being able
to absorb significant levels of damage to itself. The aircraft carrier
was meant to provide spotter planes that would locate the enemy fleet
before it came over the horizon and buy time for one’s own battleships
to line up in firing positions. Thereafter, the planes would direct the
accuracy of ship-to-ship bombardment.

However, during the Second World War, it became clear that
carrier-launched aircraft, if equipped with bombs and torpedoes, could
send even a heavily armored vessel to the bottom of the ocean. Germany
lost the Tirpitz and Japan lost the Yamato and Musashi. These were among
the most powerful battleships ever built. Indeed, the Yamato and
Musashi were considered virtually indestructible as far as any other
surface combatant was concerned. Accordingly, the demise of these
vessels signaled the emergence of the aircraft carrier as the new
capital ship.

Since then, carriers have been reflexively regarded as a symbol of
national power. US presidents are fond of using these ships for a
new-age version of gunboat diplomacy. Indeed, sending an aircraft
carrier into a crisis zone is an indication that the United States has a
stake in local conflicts, and that all the warring parties would be
well-advised to remember it.

Despite their enduring nature, aircraft carriers are regularly criticized for being too expensive. Is that really the case?
Yes, because the peacetime value of aircraft carriers considerably
exceeds their combat value. While measuring cost-effectiveness, it
really comes down to the question of what standard is adopted.
Certainly, naval bureaucracies view the carrier as a sign of
professional prowess. Witness China’s and the United Kingdom’s ongoing
efforts to develop and rejuvenate their respective carrier capabilities.
It takes considerable time to gain expertise in carrier operations.
Once acquired, it has to be showcased even when a crisis does not fully
justify its deployment.

Estimates suggest that almost 50% of the US Navy’s personnel are
assigned to positions that are directly or indirectly linked to carrier
operations. For a 286-ship force, allocating such a massive amount of
manpower in the service of just 11 carriers seems a bit excessive. The
arithmetic speaks against relying too heavily on these vessels. They
project a limited amount of offensive power, given the inherent
limitations of carrier-based aircraft, and require a great deal of
effort and resources to protect them from aerial and missile
counterattack. The escort and screening vessels that are assigned to
protect a carrier find themselves tied to the operations of the tactical
air component, which reduces their own room for maneuver in a naval
engagement.

So far, carriers have looked like a justified strategic investment
because they have not come up against serious opposition. Peacetime
deployments or tactical air support to land operations do not count as
naval battles. But this does not mean that they are worth the cost,
especially as regards an inter-state conflict.

Aircraft carriers undoubtedly remain expensive and complex
projects for emerging powers. Does that mean that the United States –
with its 11 carriers – will remain the dominant maritime power for the
foreseeable future despite perceptions that it is downsizing its role on
the world stage?

Let’s not forget that the United States is currently wondering about
the future role of its carriers. For example, some commentators and
observers advocate slowly shifting to a smaller number of flattops and
investing more in destroyers and submarines. On the other hand, others
suggest increasing the number of carriers but reducing costs by cutting
down on ship size. There is little agreement on what represents the best
way forward. Cost-cutting is at the root of these debates. The US wants
to be a preeminent naval power, but does not want to get drawn into an
arms race against itself.

No other country is presently a serious rival to the US, and there
will be none for the foreseeable future. But this assessment only holds
at the grand strategic level. Lower down, in the actual localities where
conflict might break out, the picture is more nuanced. The Chinese
People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), for example, is determined to turn
the US’ carrier fixation into a liability, by using ballistic missiles
to threaten carrier groups. The fact remains that American policymakers
will likely think twice before risking a carrier in active combat where
vital US interests are not threatened, and countries such as China know
this. So the US will find itself in possession of more carriers than any
other maritime power, but will have difficulty in leveraging these in
an increasingly militarized context in the Asia-Pacific where the
carrier is no longer a capital ship. Missiles, both surface and
air-launched, as well as submarines will pose a serious risk to any
carrier deployment that the US tries to push through against a
determined regional power.

In terms of aircraft carrier development, what should we
expect from emerging powers over the coming years? Will China’s carrier
program, for example, prompt Japan to alter its constitution to
redevelop aircraft carriers?

It is hard to see why China’s carrier program, which is more about
countering US influence in East Asia, should make Japan any more
insecure than China’s already existing air and seapower. More pressing
would be the need for Japan to step up surveillance flights using
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands,
in order to signal to China that it will maintain its administration
there, irrespective of Beijing’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).
Japan would certainly be interested in naval aviation as an instrument
of intelligence gathering and potentially to support amphibious
operations in the event of hostilities. But a fully-fledged aircraft
carrier might not be necessary for these roles, especially since it
would require altering the country’s constitution, which currently
commits it to a pacifist defense posture. A watered-down carrier variant
for UAVs or rotary wing aircraft might be sufficient.

India, on the other hand, is interested in developing a three-carrier
navy: one carrier being committed to its western and eastern seaboards
and the third held in maintenance. This may or may not be a wise use of
the country’s limited resources. A single US aircraft carrier costs as
much as ten nuclear submarines and twenty guided missile destroyers.
India cannot afford a carrier of anywhere near the tonnage deployed by
the Americans, and does not aim to either. But even so, its pursuit of a
light carrier capability seems to be driven more by a desire to
establish itself as a maritime power, than because such a capability
would be an actual asset in combat against China or Pakistan.

This week we’re considering whether air or sea power is the
predominant strategic doctrine for the 21st century. Now, bearing in
mind ongoing efforts to increase the use of unmanned aerial vehicles on
aircraft carriers, will such debates become increasingly irrelevant? Air
and Sea power are mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive,
right?
To some extent, yes. But it all depends on the specificities of the
combat theater. Obviously, airpower would play a more dominant role
against a continental adversary than seapower. As far as the US is
concerned, being protected by its geography, airpower and seapower are
indeed complementary, because the country needs both to project its
influence worldwide. For other, lesser powers with resource constraints
and proximate security threats, there might still be a trade-off
involved. To take an example: China’s carrier program is basically a
prestige project rather than a strategic game-changer in a narrow
military sense. The fact that its territorial disputes are mostly in the
maritime domain permit it to use its carrier capability as a signalling
instrument. But in the event of a major conflict with either India or
Vietnam, which actually do have land borders with China, the People’s
Liberation Army’s (PLA) airpower and ground forces would play at least
as crucial a role as its seapower, if not more so.

Finally, the Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War warns us even
today that thinking in terms of clear-cut dichotomies is not helpful.
Complementarities are much better in forging joint force synergies. The
problem for resource-strapped nations is that they still have to make a
choice between airpower and seapower, which have very different cost
outlays.

Prem Mahadevan
is a senior researcher with the Global Security Team at the Center
for Security Studies (CSS). He specializes in the study of intelligence
systems and
sub-state conflict, and is responsible at the CSS for tracking
geopolitical trends and jihadist terrorism in the Indo-Pacific region.

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